IN WHICH I EXPLORE MY FEMININE WILDS.
I recently saw a couple Instagram posts from a so-called feminist, in fact, what’s known as a “feminazi.”
She was venting her fury at men in a long tirade of defiant demands. “I don’t need to wear lipstick. I don’t need to be thin. I don’t need to grow my hair long. I don’t need to shave my legs,” and more. You could almost see her sputtering, red face, hear her stomped foot. A furious, “feminist” toddler having a tantrum. She didn’t convey power, in fact, but powerlessness.
Makeup according to her, is a “tool of the oppressive patriarchy.”
There’s a tool here, alright, and it’s the feminazi, considering she’s denying women their feminine inclinations, and their right to that choice. She’s forcing more rules on us, dictating what a feminist is. Feminists of this ilk themselves embody the same tyranny of the traditional patriarchy they despise!
So are little girls who naturally gravitate towards pink, then, tools of the patriarchy? Because a majority of girls love pink, and they continue to do so when they grow into women. Pink is associated with love, and self-love. Put an aggressive child in a pink room and watch them center and calm down. Pink is pretty and soft and accepting, pink is receptive and accommodating. Pink allows. Pink is femininity at its very best.
In the Seventies I was struck by similarly rabid “feminists” who burned their bras. How that was a symbol of male oppression was beyond me. Bras are structural necessities, and give necessary support and comfort— try being active without one: ouch. It would be just as silly for men to burn their jockstraps, and as politically meaningful.
The feminazi’s view is that we women should not do anything to please men, as if doing that is shameful. Let’s not kid ourselves, we want to be wanted, it’s natural and healthy. It doesn’t mean we’re weak or selling out — it means, in fact, we’re accessing our power.
I’m unapologetic: I like to please myself, and look my feminine best, and, moreover, I like to please men. It’s fun to decorate and send out smoke signals. That’s built into my biology, as it is built into mens’ — they want to please women, too.
Mars and Venus are in a delicious dance, and they always will be — not only is there no point in fighting it, there is every reason to celebrate it. That’s why Cole Porter rightly noted, “Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.” And that love starts with attraction.
So, to the feminazi haters, for whom not grooming is a political statement:
Go ahead, feel free not to wash your hair.
Feel free, also, not to get asked out.
Just sayin.’
Yours truly,
